


That Which Shatters and A Song That Everyone Knows

by grammarglamour



Category: Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Genre: M/M, philosophical commentary disguised as gay porn, sex during wartime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 17:40:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grammarglamour/pseuds/grammarglamour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First part: Omar and Smitty have more in common than killing Nazis.</p><p>Second part: After an injury, Smitty is grounded for a few days. Omar takes care of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Which Shatters and A Song That Everyone Knows

**Author's Note:**

> These are two stories that sort of belong together, but aren't really enough to be considered a series.

_"The mystery of sexuality is that we seek not only to get rid of this shattering tension but also to repeat, even to increase it. In sexuality, satisfaction is inherent in the painful need to find satisfaction." -- Leo Bersani, The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis and Art_

 **Part One: That Which Shatters**

Silver and blue filter down through the leaves, the moon and the sky clear and bright overhead. It's cold, the kind of cold that gets into his sinuses, makes his face feel heavy. Smitty stands there smoking, thinking about nothing much really, when Omar comes up behind him.

"Got a light?"

"Yeah." Smitty tucks his cigarette between his lips, fishes his lighter from his dirty pocket, fingernails catching on the grime and leaves that have gathered there. Without thinking, he flicks the flame up and holds the lighter to Omar's cigarette. His face is suffused then with a warm light, the kind of light of a summer evening, not the cold winter one they are experiencing now. Smitty catches Omar's eyes, brown and gold, but looks away quickly.

They stand in silence, each man looking in a different direction. Smitty is unsure what either of them are looking for or at, if it is just the alertness that has become instinct, or if they are looking toward home. He used to know things like that about himself.

"You know," Omar says, picking up a thread of conversation that had never been started. "The worst thing is, we never get any letters."

Smitty takes a drag from his cigarette, blows the smoke into the silver moonlight. He scratches his head. "I'd never thought about that before, but I guess you're right."

"Secret operation and all."

"I imagine the OSS couldn't even point us out on a map at this juncture."

"Probably not. I wish I could get a letter from my sister. She always has something interesting to say." Omar slides down the tree, sits on the cold damp earth with his knees drawn up, his arms draped over them, the cherry of the cigarette in the middle like a pendant.

Smitty thinks no man should have to be contemplative alone up against a tree, so he slides down next to Omar, crossing his legs – "Indian-style", they called it in grade school. All he can manage to say is, "Yeah."

"You got a girl or anything back home?"

Smitty smiles to himself, the rueful ironic kind of smile that he hopes Omar cannot see. "No, no girl. Or anything."

"Me either," Omar says. Smitty might be imagining it, but he thinks he hears a tremor in his voice as he says it, a quiver of hope, wondering what they might have in common that neither of them is saying, which is that they don't have much interest in women. He wonders if Omar also thinks about the hard unyielding weight of a man underneath him, the sting of stubble and the sound of guttural moans, of dry flesh against dry flesh.

They finish their cigarettes in silence, each man bent against the wind of his own thoughts.

***  
One advantage that a bunch of Jews in German territory have over the Nazis is that they don't celebrate the same holidays. The Basterds don't celebrate any holidays, the mood among the group too grim and inured to death to celebrate the festival of lights, but even if they did, Christmas wouldn't be on the list. Even Aldo and Hugo, the group's token goyim, have both professed a dislike for the holiday.

They're outside a tiny town, lurking at the edge of the forest, scoping out the situation. Smitty sees more soldiers than townspeople strolling up and down the main drag.

"Lot of krauts out there," Omar whispers.

"Not for long," Smitty says.

"You got that right."

"This should be a piece of cake."

Smitty isn't sure about that, but he doesn't think it would be right to undermine Omar's bravado, so he keeps his mouth shut.

That night, sitting in an enclave of rocks with a fire in the middle, Aldo outlines the plans. It sounds easy enough, but Smitty still isn't sure. There's a lingering part of him that is surprised whenever any of them makes it out of a situation alive. Maybe that means he's not a good soldier, but he finds the incredulity helps him. It's a nice bonus to wake up in the morning when you expect to die all the time.

He lets his eyes wander around the circle, to Hugo running his knife over a strop, Aldo cleaning his gun as he talks, Donny off to the side swinging his bat. But Omar is just sitting, looking into the fire, his hooded eyes inscrutable, his mouth set like a tiny piece of candy in his face.

Smitty goes to him, nudges him with a shoulder.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Omar snaps out of it, jerks his head in surprise, waves his hand. "Nah, they ain't even worth that."

He just nods, shuts up, but doesn't move. Omar huddles into his jacket, wrapped in as many layers as he has been able to scrounge together, just as all of them do, scavenging and piecing together something like comfort. He smells like days of sweating into his wool coat, never washing, that gamey smell of oily hair and perspiration, grimy bloody hands, all infused with a thin smell of the cold winter air like cut glass. It's a disgusting smell that has become like home to Smitty, a smell that clings to all of them like a talisman.

***  
The night it happens, the scene is right off a Christmas card. Snow sits on the roofs, warm holiday light spills out of the houses dotting the main road.

And then in the center of it all is the tavern, gerries leaning out of the doors and off the balconies, voices raucous and amplified with lagers and pilsners. The smell of food hangs in the air, and Smitty feels his stomach rumbling.

Their first step is to close the krauts in. Kagan, Zimmerman, Hirschberg, and Wicki are all stationed on surrounding roofs, guns pointed at the trapezoids of light spilling from the tavern's windows and doors, ready to shoot the first drunken kraut to wander out for a piss. Aldo, Hugo, and Donny all stand in the shadows of the front door, ready to burst in and start the killing. Smitty and Omar are bringing up the rear. Once the shooting starts, they're supposed to get the lily-livered fuckers who try to sneak out the back way.

Almost as soon as they hear the first crack of Donny's bat, the slopping sounds of guts hitting the floor after being spilled by Hugo's knife, some disheveled Nazi asshole falls out the back door, tripping over his shiny boots. Smitty doesn't even waste a bullet on him, just shoves the butt of his rifle so hard into his face, all that's left of his nose is a wet hole, glistening in the light from the door.

"Nice," Omar says.

"I thought so." Smitty smirks as the rivulets of blood warm his freezing hands.

They finish in minutes, meeting up with the rest of the guys in the middle of the bar. The stone walls drip with delicate arcs of blood like strings of cranberries; it coats the windows like stained-glass. They've even killed the barkeep, and Smitty thinks that's unfair until he sees the swastika pin on the collar of his shirt, streaked with blood.

They raid the bar, each man claiming a bottle of liquor for himself and stuffing as much food as they can into their packs and their pockets. They don't stick around to eat or drink, anticipating that at some point, some grumpy Nazi will be torn away from his venison and his Stollen and his schnapps-laced cocoa to clean up the mess and gauge the damage of the Basterds' Christmas present. Donny pisses a Star of David into the snow outside.

They spend the rest of the night running through the forest, putting as much distance as they can between themselves and the pile of bodies they left behind. At dawn, they find an abandoned farm, complete with house and outbuildings, stealing inside. They can't build a fire, don't want to advertise their whereabouts, but it is good to be inside. Smitty propelled himself through the night on adrenaline, on the rush he has come to expect from killing, and when they reach shelter, he collapses in a heap in the loft of the barn, insulated by moldy-smelling hay and an old horse blanket. He's only asleep for a few minutes when he hears the thud of boots enter the barn. He curls himself into a corner, the adrenaline rush returning, hand on his gun, ready to strike.

But instead of a steel helmet, a shock of dark hair appears over the rough boards of the loft. Omar.

"I—" he begins but does not finish, standing on the ladder. It makes him look as though he is floating in mid-air.

"Don't," is all Smitty can reply, knowing that what he wants to ask is in some space outside language, a cold dark place that is beautiful and terrifying.

Omar just nods, climbs up the ladder, and kneels in front of Smitty. He reaches his hands out, cupping Smitty's grimy cheeks. Omar's hands are rough and callous, streaked with mud and blood, smelling of raw meat and decaying leaves. He looks at Smitty, his eyes wide, his lips parted just slightly. Smitty can see into the blackness inside his mouth, the white tips of his teeth, and he knows what words would lurk there if he could manage to form them.

He puts his hands over Omar's, closes his eyes, clutches those cold dirty hands to his face, inhales the smell. He turns his head to the side, just enough so that the inside of Omar's wrist is within kissing distance, and puts his lips to the soft skin there. He rubs against the creases in Omar's wrist, his jagged, chapped skin rasping against it.

It's been so long, so long since he felt another man's touch, so long since he could bury himself in rough clothes and hard arms. Eyes still closed, he feels Omar lean in, and when he kisses Smitty, there's a feeling of tension that builds up in him, constricts his chest, hardens his cock, and he doesn't know if he wants to break that tension or let it build until the tension breaks him. Omar pushes him back into the mouldering hay, rough underneath him, poking his neck.

Their hard cocks sit in their trousers like lumps of clay, the shapes indiscernible through the layers of thick fabric. Omar slides his hands off Smitty's cheeks, into his hair, clutching tight.

"I wasn't sure you were, you know," Omar whispers, moving his mouth to Smitty's ear.

"I didn't know about you, either."

Omar laughs a little, a soft sobbing _ha_ before kissing Smitty again, deeper this time, his tongue delving into Smitty's mouth, hot and smooth.

"Been a long time since I did this," Omar says. "A long time."

"Me too."

Omar moves one hand from Smitty's hair, moves it down, lets it hover over his chest, buttoned up tight underneath shirts and sweaters and his jacket. Smitty reaches up, guides Omar's hand down, puts it over his cock. He opens his eyes and sees that Omar is staring at him, his eyes rich as fresh coffee grounds in the watery gray winter light.

"Do it if you're gonna do it," Smitty says.

He nods once, decisively, as though he had been waiting for permission. Or is it orders? In any case, he slides down, buries his face in the front of Smitty's trousers, rubs his cheeks along the rough fabric. Smitty looks down, sees his eyes closed, brows furrowed, and can't help but feel gutted by the sadness of the gesture, the innocence. He weaves his fingers into Omar's hair, holds his head close to his crotch, brings one leg half-up to rest against his shoulder. He can feel Omar's breath through the material, the open space echoing with his rattling breaths.

He can't take it anymore, has to have contact, so he nudges Omar's head up and works open his fly, brings his cock out of the slit of his long underwear, guides Omar's head down and his mouth onto it. When Omar's mouth surrounds him, it feels hotter than the hottest Manhattan summer day, wet and warm and full of possibility. He begins jerking his hips up and down, bringing his cock in and out of Omar's mouth, teasing the tip against his lips. Omar reaches up, pulls down his trousers more, reaches under him, and lets his knuckles knead the soft spot between his balls and his ass, that spot that sends electricity through him, sensation sparking through his body.

"Fuck, yes, oh God," he moans, tightening his fingers in Omar's hair. It's got to hurt, but Omar keeps going, lets his other hand come up to fist in the material of Smitty's shirt, anchors him with that and with the knuckles.

His eyes drift close and he is lost, the sensations balling up in his stomach, sitting there heavy as boulders.

"I'm close," he says, offering Omar a chance to move, but he does not, just clamps his mouth harder around the base of Smitty's cock and waits. He lets it happen, lets his seed come out and fill Omar's waiting mouth. He feels Omar swallowing around him.

Omar comes up on his knees again, looks at Smitty. "I didn't come," he says.

Smitty smiles and reaches for his hand, guides him closer until Omar's straddling his chest. He reaches up, undoes Omar's trousers, pulls his cock out. He's so hard, it looks like it must be painful, the head flushed a deep red, the shaft straining. Smitty spits into his hand, strokes once. Omar sinks down, sitting now, his weight oppressive and somehow comforting, the constriction of breath that it brings making Smitty feel enclosed. He keeps stroking, and Omar leans toward him, rests his hands on his thighs. He rolls his head back, and Smitty can see him relax. It doesn't take long for him to come, sticky white fluid raining down on Smitty in three short bursts. He feels it hit his face, wet and viscous. It runs a little, and he can feel it streaking down his cheek. He smiles up at Omar, who just looks at him incredulously. Smitty wipes his face with his handkerchief, holding it aloft for a second as he realizes that he will have to put the come-soaked material back in his pocket. He figures it won't make a difference.

They huddle together, and Smitty pulls the discarded horse blanket over them. The heat of orgasm has subsided, and both men have begun to shiver in the fading winter day. They sit with their knees up and bent, locked together, sharing space and heat. Smitty reaches out for his knapsack, pulls out a purloined baguette and some cheese, breaks it into even pieces and hands one to Omar.

"You ever wonder about the other guys?" Omar asks around a bite of bread.

"Wonder what?"

"You know, if they're queer."

Smitty sucks in a shaky breath, swallows a bit of cheese. "I hadn't thought about it. I always just kind of assume I'm the only one."

"Feels like it sometimes, don't it?"

"I think any guy would fuck another guy, if that was his only choice."

"Even someone like Donowitz?"

"Are you kidding me?" Smitty says. " _Especially_ someone like Donowitz."

"You think so?"

"I knew a dozen guys like him in Manhattan. They'd come down to the queer bars after their shifts at the docks or the slaughterhouses, piss around for a while, pretend like they were just keeping an eye on things, and then by the end of the night one of _us_ would be going home with one of _them_ ," Smitty says.

"That's different, though," Omar says. "Those guys could have gotten broads if they wanted, probably."

"None of it is different. You think these Nazi fucks aren't getting it on with each other half the time?"

"Jesus, that's the last thing I want to think about."

Smitty laughs. "Yeah, I guess that's pretty grotesque."

"You're probably right, though. I mean, I guess it goes both ways. I'd make it with a broad if I didn't have no one else," Omar says. "I just prefer . . ."

"Yeah."

They finish the food, each man picking the crumbs from the front of his jacket. Smitty knows he has a canteen tucked away somewhere, rummaging in his pack for it. He finds it – empty – and goes outside to fill it with water from the rain barrel. Ice floes bob on the surface of the water, white and gray in the clear water. He rubs his hands and face with snow, and the melt that comes off his hands is gray and pink. Mixed with the white snow around it, a fleeting thought passes through his mind of Neapolitan ice cream at the soda fountain around the corner from his family's apartment. He wonders if there is any Neapolitan ice cream left anywhere in the lousy world, or if everything is just blood and gore and hate.

He purges these thoughts, takes a few swigs from the canteen, and refills it.

He climbs back up the ladder to the hay loft to find Omar huddled under the blanket in a nest of hay. When he sees Smitty, he raises a corner, and Smitty smiles as he crawls in with him. He offers Omar the canteen, and he drinks, huddled under the blanket as though he is hiding booze. They settle back, falling asleep facing one another, fingers buried in each other's shirts for warmth, foreheads touching.

***  
They are roused a while later under the cover of darkness, the only light coming from the moon. It's a full moon, shining right into the high barn window, illuminating the whole building in ghostly light. They awaken to boots and a soundless, discordant humming.

"We're moving out, soldiers." Donny's voice rings from below, echoing through the rafters.

They try to disengage, but are still too groggy, and before they have the chance, when they are still tangled in the blanket, Donny's head pokes up on the ladder.

"Hey, don't know who all is in here—" He stops when he sees them. "Oh. Oh shit," he says, climbing hastily down the ladder. Smitty hears a thud as he jumps the last few rungs.

Smitty throws the blanket off of them, smacks Omar's shoulder. He ties up his knapsack, grabs his gun, smoothes back his hair.

Donny is stammering downstairs, saying, "Aldo wants to get a move on. It's almost nine. But, um, no rush, I mean, I haven't even got the other guys together."

They climb down the ladder one-by-one, Smitty brushing just a little too close to Donny, Omar putting his head down and smiling into the turned-up collar of his coat as he hurries out into the cold darkness.

 **Part Two: A Song That Everyone Knows**

He has gotten better at vigilance, has learned to count footsteps and calculate any extras, has learned to listen for snapping twigs and spot unusual bumps in the forest floor. He is good at these things because he makes it his business to be good at things, and he has managed to save them a few times by alerting Aldo to irregularities first. But his winning streak was bound to come to an end eventually, and end it did one day in the middle of winter, just weeks after they massacred the Germans in the tavern at Christmas.

There had been a small detachment of gerries guarding a bridge. They were worried about the French resistance blowing it up. Smitty feels a little put out by that, thinking that the Basterds' reputation precedes them and they should not let themselves get upstaged by a bunch of Frenchmen with homemade bombs. At any rate, the gerries had not expected whooping Americans to run out of the ditch by the side of the road.

In the cold, bright midday sun, the Basterds charge at the krauts like barbarians at the gates of Rome, yelling and storming them inelegantly. The gerries, to their credit, jump to action quickly, the report of their guns reverberating off the bridge in question, the hills of the ditch, the very trees. The Basterds respond in kind, returning fire, charging with knives and guns, and Donny with his bat.

Smitty is so focused on shooting that he does not see the German slithering along the frozen ground, coming toward him with his knife already unsheathed. Smitty is shooting a man off the bridge and into the water when he feels his feet knocked out from under him. The German pins Smitty to the ground, but he manages to wriggle from underneath him, rolling just as he plunges the knife. It hits Smitty in the meat of his upper arm, the heat of pain spreading through, making him stop and see stars. Smitty pulls his leg up and kicks at the German's chest. He falls in a gasping heap, but pulls himself up in seconds, readying to charge.

He never makes it to Smitty. A blur of dark hair and brown clothes charges out of nowhere and pulls him off. Smitty sees that it is Omar, that his face is streaked with blood and mangled with rage. He smashes the German's face with his fist, over and over, until all Smitty can hear is the sucking rasp of the man trying to breathe around blood. Omar finishes him off with his own knife, delivering a death blow to the chest.

He's at Smitty's side then, his hands hovering over him, eyes deep with worry. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Jesus, go finish the job with the guys," Smitty says, his head feeling light.

The sounds of killing eventually turn into a symphony for Smitty. He hears them as music, as the staccato of a snare drum and the high tooting of horns rather than the crack of rifles and the crunch of bones.

"Hang in there," Omar says.

"Can't go anywhere anyway."

"Yeah, that's right." It might be sweat or it might be tears, but Omar's cheeks are glossy. He squeezes Smitty's hand, rabbit-quick, before calling for help.

Smitty passes out, then, and dreams of holidays with his parents, parties he went to in England, trips he has taken and sunsets he has seen.

***  
Night has fallen when he wakes. His arm burns like it has been branded, his head feels fuzzy, and his mouth is dry. He rolls his head around, tries to get his bearings. All he can see is a wool blanket over the window and a candle throwing a faint orange glow around the room. Omar sits in a corner, head lolling back, gun across his lap.

"Water?" Smitty asks.

Omar's head snaps up, his hands tightening around his gun. He swears under his breath when he sees that it's just Smitty, awake. "Water, sure."

He tips the canteen against Smitty's lips, a few droplets running down his chin. It soothes his aching throat, cools his mouth. Smitty manages to pull himself in a sitting position, his arm wrapped against his chest with a strip of cloth.

"Where are we?"

"Abandoned factory," Omar says. "The attic, to be exact."

"Why didn't you just leave me? This is too fucking dangerous," Smitty hisses.

"Aldo wouldn't leave you. And neither would – neither would I." Omar says this last bit with his head down, his thumb stroking the side of his mouth.

"That's real sweet of you, but we're sitting ducks in here."

"Will you quit bitching and lay back and get better, please? The sooner you can make it out of here, the sooner we can stop being sitting fucking ducks."

"Sorry."

Omar lunges toward him then, his grimy hands fisting in Smitty's hair, and he kisses Smitty with a force that seems innocuous coming from such a small body.

"Be more careful," Omar says when he pulls away. His teeth are clenched, a muscle in his jaw pulsing.

"I will," is all Smitty can say to that.

***  
He can hear the rain on the roof, a constant plink and patter. It rolls down over the grimy attic windows, streaking the dirt and cobwebs into a mulchy mess. On the ground, the rain has begun to melt the snow, leaving only dirty clods dotting the weedy grounds around the factory. He lets the blanket fall back over the window, sits back on the nest they have made on the floor, a pile of blankets and old rags. It reeks of mold and decay, but it is sheltered, at least.

The stairs creak, and Smitty grabs his revolver, but it's only Omar, back from checking outside for uninvited guests. He lowers his gun.

"Everything's fine. Quiet. How you feeling?"

"All right. It hurts."

Omar reaches into his pack and pulls out an extra shirt, rubbing the water from his hair. "Let's take a look."

Smitty unbuttons his shirt, shrugs his arm out of it. He peels back the blood-soaked bandage to reveal the jagged stitches, the puckered skin tentatively adhering back together.

"Who stitched me up, anyway?" he asks.

"Aldo did," Omar says, holding the candle to the wound, poking around it with his finger. "That hurt?"

"Not too bad."

"Good." His hand lingers on Smitty's arm, his thumb stroking back and forth. He looks up, catches Smitty's eyes, and smiles. "Sorry."

Smitty reaches up with his good arm, puts his hand over Omar's. "It's okay."

They have not talked about what happened in the barn. There has never been a chance to, and even if there had, Smitty doesn't know what he might have said. Instead, they have had to go back to the old codes – eyes cast down, sly smiles, lighting one another's cigarettes. But there has been a world of words in those signifiers.

He thinks about the other places he has been, Manhattan and London, Paris and Manchester. He would meet men in alleys and public bathrooms, parks and bars, go off with them to some secluded spot, let them inside his body. None of them ever got under his skin. None of them ever made him feel like this, like it might be okay, like there was something else out there besides brutality and drifting around, bouncing like raindrops against one another, always splashing and refracting, never pooling together.

Smitty brings his hand up to Omar's chin, his fingers pressing into his cheek. He breathes deep, nostrils flooded with the smell of sweat and hair and cigarettes. There is something more vivid about this, something that makes all of his other engagements seem muted, fogged. Omar is real, more real, than any other man before him.

As the rain continues to cascade off the roof, as the sun sneaks toward the horizon under the cover of clouds, Omar sinks to his knees, runs his hand up Smitty's arm and to his neck, lets it rest there for a moment like a man swearing before the court. He sets the candle down, his other hand coming up to Smitty's hair, runs his fingers over the short bristles at the back of his neck. He leans in, his lips pressing against Smitty's, and Smitty opens his mouth to him, allows himself to be explored. It is slow and gentle, so unlike the previous night's kiss that had been full of desperate entreaties and unspoken fears.

They slide down onto the pile of cloth, grinding a rhythm out against each other. It is too cold to take off their clothes. The candle throws a flickering yellow pall over the dingy gray room, reflected in Omar's eyes, the irises seeming to wobble like egg yolks, the pleading in them so deep that they look endless. Smitty can't bear it then, can't bear that look of sadness, so he pulls Omar close. Omar looks surprised for a moment, even questioning, but he lets his head fall, lets himself sink into Smitty.

"What's it like for you?" Smitty asks.

"What's what like for me?"

"Being queer."

"What's it like for anyone? Jesus, why would you ask a thing like that?" he asks, his hand resting on Smitty's chest, his thumb swiping at the soft skin over his collar bone.

"I just wonder. I mean, I know what it was like for me."

"You tell me first, then."

Smitty sighs, shifting so that Omar is tucked into his uninjured arm. "It's always felt like I could do whatever I wanted because no one saw me. They might see me if I'm doing normal things, at the market or whatever, but when it comes to that – they can't. So it doesn't exist, right? And when I'm doing it, neither do I."

"That makes sense. Sort of. You done it with a lot of guys?"

"Maybe. Yeah, I guess. You?"

Omar shrugs against him. "Not really. A few. Never more than once or twice, you know?"

"I know."

And there it is. The simple, sad, lonely truth that Smitty has known since he was eighteen years old, cruising in dives and parks. Contact is fleeting, particles brushing together for a few hours, and then scattering to the winds again. Hearing it from Omar is like hearing someone sing a song that he's heard on the radio. It's familiar, different, and sadder than he could ever imagine.

That night, he and Omar fuck with the desperation that only war can bring. They fuck as though the entire German army is at their heels. It is at once more desperate and more intimate than anything else Smitty has ever known.

In the past, in those frantic times in parks and bathrooms, each man – himself included – only did what he did blindly, as a man in a cave groping for purchase against the solidity of a wall. This hasty union, this fevered cymbal crash of dirty bodies, is an expedition. He feels that he is learning about Omar, sifting down to his core and dusting off the center of him and watching him shine.

When the sun rises, infusing the last vestiges of clouds wisped across the sky with pink and gold, both men lay in half-sleep, clutching one another.

***  
A week passes, and they spend their days hyper-vigilant of the world around them, always having to keep one eye focused on their surroundings even as they want to zero in on one another. There is a strange rhythm to their lives that week. They are playing house during wartime, and Smitty feels like he is stuck between two worlds.

They have been spending their days holed up in the attic, talking and fucking, in various states of undress as weather and circumstance will allow. This where they are when they hear footsteps below in the factory. They are into their clothes and guns in hand, pointed at the door, ready to shoot, when they hear Donny's ragged squawking and an exuberant "Yoo hoo!" from Gerold. They grin as they open the door, poking their heads out.

"I hope you're better," Donny says. "We got orders from the OSS. We got another job to work on, and Aldo said he ain't goin without you two."

He stomps up the stairs, Gerold at his heels, clapping Omar and Smitty on the shoulders as he breezes into the attic. He looks around at the makeshift bed, the stub of a candle, the pile of cigarette butts.

"Got yourselves a cozy little nest in here," he says.

Smitty bows his head and smiles, eyes flickering to Omar. He knows they are both thinking of that time before, Donny getting flustered when he found them curled up under the horse blanket in that anonymous French barn. Donny covers up any lingering embarrassment now with bravado, jokes, wolf whistles. He's not fooling anyone. Well, maybe Gerold.

They pack up, cover their tracks, and head out to the rendezvous spot. The other guys welcome them back like long-lost brothers, and they continue the march toward the next operation. Smitty's arm hitches and twinges, but he works through the pain.


End file.
